For the past 8+ months, I had the very cool experience of working on the Spotify Wrapped team for 2023, focusing on user personalization data. Through this team focuses on crafting the logic and stories that you and I see in the 2023 Wrapped experience, including brand new stories. This year included a new story called “Sound Town,” which aimed to identify and connect each user with the city that listened most similarly to the user.

The original pitch slide for "Musical Hometown", now "Sound Town", in Wrapped 2023

I came up with the idea for Sound Town, which I had originally termed “Musical Hometowns”, back in 2021 when I realized I just happened to be listening to a bunch of Australian indie bands. So when I was chatting with someone leading the user data team for Wrapped, I knew I had to pitch the story to him so he could make the story a reality. I ultimately joined the team and one thing led to another after another, resulting in the story you can see today. The project, along with my other work on Wrapped, was an excellent example of collaboration and exploration as we worked with extremely talented designers, marketers, brand creatives, and a whole slew of other people across Spotify and I’m so glad it made it through the process and out the other side after many, many hours of work.

To my surprise, when the story went live at the end of November, it kind of took off like gangbusters as people latched on to the concept and the meme potential around what each city assignment really meant. The story ultimately became the most viral Wrapped data story to-date, resulting in many, many great memes and quite a few articles from The New York Times and the likes speculating on what it all meant.

I hope y'all enjoyed Sound Town, wherever you ended up! And if you're interested in doing what we've called "Sound Town: Hardcore Mode", you can always move there to fully commit to the bit. I'll be moving to Hobart, Australia, so see you down south!

Since I had a thoroughly good time reading the internet when Wrapped came out this year, I'll leave you with some of my favorite Sound Town related memes for you to enjoy. Thanks all for being funny!

I'll be shipping off to Hobart, Australia apparently, based on my enjoyment of Middle Kids, Angie McMahon, and The Rubens

I'll be shipping off to Hobart, Australia apparently, based on my enjoyment of Middle Kids, Angie McMahon, and The Rubens